Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

I watched SKYs newspaper review at 11.30pm last night and Pis-ed myself laughing at that article from the telegraph, its obvious some of these newspaper reporters and more importantly editors are not looking behind the figures and doing their jobs properly.

Id's is trying to blow smoke up peoples asses.


As a rule "self employed" = unemployed.

Try getting a proper loan without at least three years accounts.

Hard to do if you are on £7 quid an hour.

Mass Workfare Begins Next Monday … Or Does It?
Posted on April 23, 2014 by johnny void | 66 comments

bhf-workfareWith less than one week to go until the launch date of the DWP’s woefully misnamed ‘Help To Work’ and details of the programme are still shrouded in secrecy.

‘Help To Work’ is the mass workfare scheme announced by George Osborne at last year’s Tory Party conference. Those leaving the Work Programme without a job – which is almost everyone – will either have to sign on every day or be forced to work for no pay for a ‘community’ organisation for six months. The whole package is expected to cost almost a third of a billion, with most of that money lining the pockets of private sector profiteers running the scheme.

The problem is no-one knows who those providers are yet, including the DWP themselves. A response to a Freedom of Information request dated April 10th said that the tender for ‘Help To Work’ was still ongoing. The DWP have also said that the guidance for companies running the scheme will not be published until the launch date, 28th April.

What we do know is that Help To Work is already mired in chaos. Several high profile volunteer’s organisations have condemned the plans whilst three of the largest supporters of other workfare schemes have said they will not accept placements. Both The Conservation Volunteers and The Salvation Army were expected to bid for Help To Work contracts or sub-contracts, and neither of them have. YMCA have also said they will not accept placements on the scheme, whilst even workfare quango Groundwork are wobbling.

This is more than just an embarrassment for Help To Work, it is a fucking disaster and one was that was entirely predictable. For years workfare programmes have come close to collapse due to a lack of available work placements. Despite what politicians would like to think, the charitable sector has no need for hundreds of thousands of forced workers. The truth is that there isn’t enough workfare to go round for everyone on benefits, let alone real, paid work. The Community Action Programme pilot - a similar workfare scheme to Help To Work - found that placements could only be found for 63% of participants. This took place before scores of charities distanced themselves from workfare due to huge pressure from their supporters who turned out to be disgusted that these organisations used unpaid forced labour.

Help To Work is not the only DWP scheme that looks to be in trouble. Remember Iain Duncan Smith’s plan to warehouse unemployed people for six months at a time on full time job search? No, well it seems neither does he. There has been no sign at all of this scheme, which was also announced at the Tory Party Conference.

It will the the demise of Help To Work which will be the biggest embarrassment to this Government however. This is their latest big idea to fix unemployment after the disaster that has been the Work Programme. It already appears to be yet another shambles. Whatever is announced next Monday – if anything at all – the Help To Work scheme is unworkable.

Lib Dems granted 'national minority status' to save them from extinction


By Tim Stanley Politics
Last updated: April 24th, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100268930/lib-dems-granted-national-minority-status-to-save-them-from-extinction/




They once had thousands of members and could boast that they were “breaking the mould of British politics”, but with numbers in fast decline the Government has been forced to act to save the Liberal Democrats by giving them “national minority status”. Nick Clegg, who made the announcement from a phone box in Cornwall on Thursday morning, said, “This might be the only way to save us from extinction. Will you accept reverse charges?”

The Lib Dems are thought to date back to the late 1980s and their population is scattered around Twickenham and Truro. A surprising number of celebrities are thought to be Lib Dems, including Honor Blackman, star of The Upper Hand, and Daniel Radcliffe, famous for playing children and very short men. Professor Andrew Spode of Cosmopolitan University says that their culture is unique: “The Lib Dems speak a language full of unusual words, like ‘proportional representation’ and ‘vegan buffet’. Often, the words they use mean something very different to how they sound. So when a Lib Dem tells you that they support something ‘100 per cent’, that actually means that they are opposed to it – and vice versa. This can lead to cultural misunderstandings and is probably why they are so unpopular.” Lib Dems will often move into an area, irritate the locals with u-turns and be driven out a few years later with pitchforks. One anonymous Tory councillor described them as “More trouble than they’re worth. They ruin the neighbourhood with their smelly recycling.”

The Lib Dem cuisine is wholly vegetarian and they even have a national dress comprising sandals, beard and a smell of self-satisfaction that the unnamed Tory councillor describes as “ungodly”. There have been several attempts to promote Lib Demery in recent years, including the establishment of a Lib Dem Cultural Centre in Dorset. Visitors could engage with an animatronic Shirley Williams who would tell them all about the benefits of loft insulation and the alternative vote. The Centre closed down last January due to lack of interest.

The political response to the Lib Dems gaining national minority status has been mixed. Ed Miliband, who is avoiding Britain during the Euro elections, sent a telegram from an undisclosed location to say that the policy was “under review” until 2016. Nigel Farage, canvassing in a Threshers in Chigwell, said that it was “time to send the Lib Dems back where they come from. If they like Brussels so much, why don’t they live there? Instead they hang around on street corners stealing British jobs from British people. Jobs that ordinary, decent Brits wouldn’t do – like appearing on Question Time and pretending to have opposed Iraq.”

Paddy Ashdown was available for comment, but no one could understand a word he said.

Manchester United should not have sacked David Moyes, Arsenal supporter Nick Clegg has said.

The deputy prime minister told LBC radio this morning that the former manager had not deserved to be out of a job after less than a season in charge.

"I thought they were just going to let him try and make the best of it, and then take on the new signings," he said. "Personally I think they should have held onto him - but it's a personal opinion."

Cynics might argue Clegg would naturally take the side of an under pressure leader whose team is lagging behind other teams in points.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage boasts: We will hold balance of power at next general election, just as Nick Clegg did



Adoring crowd in Labour stronghold cheers Ukip’s leader at his biggest rally yet



Jonathan Brown

Wednesday 23 April 2014

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukip-leader-nigel-farage-boasts-we-will-hold-balance-of-power-at-next-general-election-just-as-nick-clegg-did-9278972.html



The 1,200-strong crowd had waited for the best part of an hour, marinated on a diet of soft jazz and expectation in the cavernous surroundings of the Sage in Gateshead.


Abdul Bashir, Ukip’s small business spokesman and master of ceremonies, who had paid for the hire of the hall out of his own pocket, did his best to whip them up into a frenzy. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” he intoned.

Striding on to the stage to a standing ovation at the largest public meeting the party had ever held, Mr Farage was a man radiating belief that the time was now and the man was indeed him.

The Ukip leader was on Tyneside to take the fight to the Labour Party in its political fortress. Shrugging off the shouts of two noisy protesters who had evaded the tight security, he took little time in striking out.

“They [Labour] have turned their backs on you in favour of the European project and big corporations in the private sector. You are no longer represented by that party – we will stand up and fight for you,” he promised to waves of applause.

According to Mr Farage, a strong showing by his “people’s army” will mean neither Labour nor the Conservatives will be able to “rat on the deal” of an in/out European referendum. Moreover, at the next general election Ukip would “hold the balance of power as Nick Clegg did in 2010,” he added. “There will be a referendum then.”

But it was not just Europe which lit up a crowd clearly disaffected by the mainstream parties. There was immigration too – a central plank of the “bomb-proof argument” which is threatening a political earthquake under the political establishment, he claimed. “We want our country back… We are run by a bunch of college kids who have never done a day’s work in their life,” he warned.

The North-east has yet to return a Ukip MEP but the numbers are stacking up. Last time the party came fourth with 90,000 votes, with Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats returning one MEP each.

The collapse of Mr Clegg’s party – down to just eight per cent in some polls – means a seat here is almost guaranteed. The party is talking loudly about winning two.

Since the televised debate Ukip polling puts it just four points behind Labour in the North-east, where it believes it is likely to replicate recent second places in parliamentary votes in Middlesbrough and South Shields as well as a close finish in a recent Sunderland council election.

It may have been a sign of how rattled they are but Ukip’s opponents had campaigned hard against the event even taking place, pointing out that the Sage – the centrepiece of Gateshead’s regenerated quayside – was the beneficiary of £5.6m of European funding.

Ukip argued back that this was just a tenth of the daily amount it claims the UK pays to Brussels each day. And when social media opponents urged the venue to refuse to host the rally, it fell to Billy Bragg to speak out in support of the party’s freedom of assembly.

On the night, the main door was picketed by Labour activists, Socialist Workers and gay rights campaigners proclaiming “migrants welcome – racists not”. Supporters of the English Defence League protested at the side door.

Inside there was a mixture of the committed, the hopeful and the curious. Bryan Ray, 73, a retired oil and gas worker, had been a Ukip man since 1996. This year he persuaded his wife to join too.

“It was very, very slow up here starting up. The branch I belong to only really got cracking in July. It’s about getting the right people with the right enthusiasm,” he said. “The difference is Nigel Farage without a doubt. Without him as a leader and his personality we would not be where we are.”

Shaun Rowland, 14, was here with his mother. One day he fancied being an MP and was shopping around for a party. While Labour once offered the only choice for aspiring politicians, times have changed. “I think in this part of the country we have voted for Labour for too long and we have seen nothing happen. We need to vote for a different party. We have been stuck in the 1980s for too long,” he said.

Hays Hays Hays Hays...........just out................

electionista ‏@electionista
UK - YouGov/Sun poll:

CON 32%
LAB 38%
LDEM 8%
UKIP 14%

Food Banks in the Worlds 5th most rich country..........PATHETIC and a disgrace for everyone here in this country.

better to have foodbanks that serve a purpose and a need than to have none and pretend no problem exists

btw, do not say usa, germany and france have foodbanks?
if not, why not?
china almost certainly does not, and there's sure plenty of undernourished there, as well as of course in india
japan is too closed a society, but i'm sure they have similar problems too

=================

on a different tack, i find it amusing that you and your other (pretend) egalitarian/socialist buddies don't get stuck into NF
he most assuredly went to a public school (dulwich), and is a frequent attendee at that most elitist golfing event (halford hewitt) in plus-fours and a loud blazer

The first food bank was opened in france in 1984
The first food bank was opened in Italy in 1989

There are food banks in virtually every country in the world. The US has a huge food bank system feeding a much bigger percentage of their population than we do.

Food Kitchens Hays. Please get it right.

Well, they seem to be called food banks and they give out food parsrls.

Food banks, food kitchens...who gives a toss what you call it?


People are in tough times, whilst bankers and political tossers eat fillet steak and piss it up on subsidised expenses.


Do you notice any HoC/eurobods searching out the old food bins?


trebles all round!

Kay Burley ‏@KayBurley 12m
BREAKING; Virgin plane hijacked and forced to land in Bali - Reuters

Flightradar24.com ‏@flightradar24 11m
Virigin Atlantic flight VA41 is squawking 7500 (hijack) on ground on Denpasar Airport

BBC Breaking News ‏@BBCBreaking 3m
A Virgin aircraft flying from Australia believed hijacked at Bali airport, reports quoting Indonesian officials say http://bbc.in/1pwkujc

At least it's on the ground.

All over, it wasn't a hijack, it was a piss artiste making trouble.

Just a reminder for Manuel!

.